Tuesday, November 08, 2011

art toneless glumes

Part art. Someone has left an adhesive graffito on a rusting metal casing. Erosion, if it has not improved it, has neatly modified.

There is an absence of tone in The Grove this afternoon. The ground strewn with leaves, the paths brown, the shrubs, black and ochre, the trees trunks slate-coloured, the branches scratched against a grey sky. It is not raining but the still air is full of moisture and heavy drops condense and fall from above with an occasional plop.

The Observers Book of Grasses, Sedges and Rushes sits on my desk. I enjoy reading about Glumacious plants ( a lovely word which goes some way to explain my pleasure) if only for the vocabulary which comes with them. An example from the introduction: " The naturalist understands by "grass" such plants only as fall under the description given below of the Gramineae, a natural family of the larger order Glumaceae which differ from most other flowering plants in having their flowers enclosed in chaffy scales or glumes known as spikelets."
It is apparently common to confuse the grass family with other members of the Glumaceous order belonging to the family of Cyperaceae or sedges. It is pleasing to be reminded that bamboos of which tall forests are found in Asia, are grasses. And sugar cane too.

3 comments:

I once had to cover a talk by the head of the Sports Turf Research Institute based in Bingley. It was there that I came upon chewings fescue for the first time. I take this rare opportunity of wheeling it out for its decennial promenade.

Glumes, what a wonderful word and one that brought me straight over, overcome with curiosity, when I saw it in my sidebar.

I like the idea of recondite anecdotes which we get out perhaps only once every ten years. It might be interesting to make an anthology of them, but the problem is they rather have a life and will of their own and only pop up when summoned by some unexpected prompt. That's what I find anyway.

About Me

Compasses

Following their Handbook for Explorers collaboration on the Compasses site (link below), Lucy Kempton and I are working together on a new venture, Questions. This is a series of poems submitted by each of us alternately, and prompted in the case of each poem by the previous poem and a new question. It is a process of adventure and discovery. Join us for the ride.http://www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/